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April 7, 2016

Review: The Darkest Corners

The Darkest Corners by Kara ThomasGrade: C-Release date: April 19, 2016An e-galley was provided by the publisher in exchange for review consideration.Summary: There are ghosts around every corner in Fayette, Pennsylvania. Tessa left when she was nine and has been trying ever since not to think about it after what happened there that last summer. Memories of things so dark will burn themselves into your mind if you let them. Callie never left. She moved to another house, so she doesn’t have to walk those same halls, but then Callie always was the stronger one. She can handle staring into the faces of her demons—and if she parties hard enough, maybe one day they’ll disappear for good. Tessa and Callie have never talked about what they saw that night. After the trial, Callie drifted and Tessa moved, and childhood friends just have a way of losing touch. But ever since she left, Tessa has had questions. Things have never quite added up. And now she has to go back to Fayette—to Wyatt Stokes, sitting on death row; to Lori Cawley, Callie’s dead cousin; and to the one other person who may be hiding the truth. Only the closer Tessa gets to the truth, the closer she gets to a killer—and this time, it won’t be so easy to run away.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Darkest Corners is, at its core, a mystery/thriller, and a twisted one at that. It's a grim story and, ultimately, one that left me a bit disheartened. I like all of my books to have a little sunshine through the clouds, to not be so depressing and gray. I kill characters in my own writing and they don't always have happy lives. But, at the end of the day, I still try to deliver themes of sacrifice, loyalty, and love, and I prefer to see that in the books I read. Basically, there needs to be some good in all the darkness, and I don't think The Darkest Corners delivered on that.Tessa and Callie are not optimistic characters. Nor are they ones that make the best choices. They sneak around and throw themselves in harm's way much too often for my tastes. I'm only a year or so older than them, and I have enough sense to not do the things they did.The ending did nothing for me. Most of the book left a bitter taste in my mouth, and the reunion between Tessa and Joslin at the end did nothing to erase that.There's a lot of swearing. I mark in my e-galleys every time I see the s-word or f-word, and I lost count how many I marked. There isn't any sexual content on the pages, but there are prostitutes. There's also a lot of underage drinking.The Verdict: Much too bleak and dark.